Editorial by Nika Glover

Change is in the Air

It’s already spring and the first issue of Approach-Mech is finally here. Those of us on the staff felt that the magazine should not only have great content but should also be visually interesting. So we took the time to ensure it met both goals.

These two magazines have a long history and they deserve a spectacular reemergence. With that said, one of our biggest challenges during the redesign was figuring out how to integrate Mech magazine without upsetting our audience. We considered flipping it on the back or adding a pullout in the middle. We even considered adding both titles to the cover. However we had to ensure it still met the periodical guidelines. So we decided the best way to integrate the two was to make Mech a department of Approach. We hope we achieved the goal of making the magazine a representation of both the maintainers and aviators.

While I was going through your submissions for this issue, I discovered that many of you like to include photos. Please keep those coming as we feel the story only gets better when an author is able to give us a visual representation of his or her experience. Check out the information below to see our submission guidelines for photos and articles.

We get a lot of submissions for Bravo Zulus and I will try my best to include every single one of those. You deserve the recognition that your leadership took the time to request from us. Don’t forget to include photos with those. As you will see in this issue, the Bravo Zulus went above and beyond to ensure the safety of their fellow Sailors and Marines.

You may have also noticed that we have three articles from our very own members of the Naval Safety Center. Take note of what they have to say. These are the folks who are going out to the fleet to make safety assessments. They’ve seen it all, and are experts in their field. So they know what they’re talking about.

Take a look at the diagram on page 19 regarding the risk of financial loss after a permanent disability due to an on the job injury. You will note that no matter what rank you are, your compensation will cap at a certain point and there will be no advancements from there if you get hurt. So be safe and continue to rise within the ranks.

If you have a job that requires you to do more than six hours of sitting, check out the poster on page 11. It’s designed to be a cut out that you can reference whenever you need to get a little relief. Try some of the techniques mentioned and I guarantee your neck, shoulders and back will be grateful.

On a side note, I received an email from LT James Harrison, letting me know that the article, “Effects of Nicotine use in Aviation” (printed in the November-December 2015 issue) contained a misprint. It stated that an aviator is allowed to have “four to five cups of coffee or 150mg of caffeine”. What it should have said was “aviators are authorized 450mg of caffeine”, according to OPNAVINST 3710.7u Chapter 8, 8.3.2.5 (6). Thank you, LT Harrison, for catching that and keeping us honest. If you ever see an error in fact or a simple misprint, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Last, I’d like to thank ATCS (AW) Daniel Eborn for assisting the Approach staff in December of 2015 with helping to coordinate the front cover photo shoot. The two Sailors, AWS3 Brandon Seufert and AWS3 Jamus Honson were excited to participate and ATCS Eborn even brought along his camera just in case we needed extra photos. I hope you like the cover page and those that follow.

Editor, Approach and Mech Naval Safety Center

PHOTOS WANTED

The Approach-Mech staff would like to print your photo submissions. If you have interesting safety related images to go along with a story, or a single image we would like to print it.

Please send an email to the editor at:

Approach: SAFE-Approach@navy. mil or Mech: SAFE-Mech@navy.mil. All photos must be high resolution (300 dpi) in JPEG or JPG format. Photos submitted in a word document or PDF will lose it’s quality. Be sure to include the photographers full name. If you have an image larger than 10MB, email the editor first for an alternate submission process.

If you’d like to submit an article with the image, it must be double spaced in Courier New 11 point font.